weekend.

i <3 weekends with Vietnamese food!
Goi ga bap cai (cabbage chicken salad)

the visuals

 Lunch meeting at the contemporary art museum yesterday!

Visual art administration seems SO different from working with the performing arts. The other interns felt right at home, but I would have a whole lot to learn if I ever wanted to do anything with visual arts. (First, how do dress like a visual arts administrator. They were FIERCE.)

Again, another beautiful space. The conference room looked out to the city and the coolest parking garage i've ever seen. (Yes, it's a parking garage!)

And they gave us the nicest gifts from the museum shop!





Part of a giant wall installation in the lobby.
She was right at eye level.





They gave all the interns:

Obey Giant tee shirts.

A giant book on Keith Haring.

A Keith Haring Radiant Baby button. 

And lots of materials on the organization.

I sent a thank you note this morning.

They were definitely great to meet.

Auf Wiedersehen!



treats from the party today.
mine had raspberry filling!

A member of the marketing team is moving overseas & the whole office got together to say goodbye.

In the farewell speech, the guest of honor noted how nothing could be possible without the whole team. Marketing, development, communications, production, artistic, education... Team effort to make the whole thing work. 

Which got me thinking about the areas of this field that I'm most interested in. (And this definitely helped.)



Today, I would say I'm most interested in public relations. Artistic planning is a close 2nd. Then marketing. Then education. But for now, I'm just enjoying the intern perks (=the cupcakes) being a tiny part of the team.  

back to blogging

Good morning!

I have the morning off today. Perfect opportunity to get back to blogging after a short hiatus!

It's insanely hot in my part of the country! The heat has made it exceedingly difficult to do much of anything. I've seen this little weather map floating around Facebook. 100% accurate! (via)

(My energy bill this month is going to be RIDICULOUS.)

LOL. Anyway. Back to the internship.

I'm having a great time. Today starts week seven of the ten week internship. It's flying by!

This week, I have two meetings with the other interns. One is at a trendy downtown art museum that I've been dying to visit. Later in the week, we start filming the video series I helped write for a few weeks ago. Super excited. 

I'll be sad to leave my internship in a few weeks, but I'm definitely ready to start working to earn my way into a full time position in this field. More on that, the GRE, applications, and this weekend's impulse buy this week! Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

stay tuned.

I'm behind on updates. Someone (I'm not saying any names) was inspired to chew through my modem cables this week. =no wifi.

 Little punk. :)

Lots of exciting projects, convesations and ideas this week. Stay tuned!

weekend impulse



source



Saturday afternoon impulse buy:

Purple & red Banana Republic wedge heels from the Mustard Seed Boutique. $19.17

I love the color, and the wedge is pretty klutz-friendly. I'm not big on heels, but maybe if I keep practicing I'll be brave enough to wear them in public! Maybe.

Back to work tomorrow!

office cleaning day

Big cleaning day today.
The whole office shut down to help clean out desks, file cabinets, storage spaces... The institution is over 100 years old in an even older builidng so there was a lot of STUFF. 

I knew it was going to be a rough day, but I had one goal: 

Find something nice & bring it home. 

I got lucky!

I got:

1. The old (really old, but still digital!) PR camera. Found it in the boss' office, he let me keep it!

2. A beautiful program book from the Vienna Konzerthaus. This was in the assistant's filing cabinet.

3. And a promo-sized poster of this recording.

I saved it from the trash! It's going to look great in my apartment!

 

I came home smelling like dust, mothballs and cardboard.
I went up the road and got Yagoot to celebrate the weekend.

macguyver moment

A little while ago my favorite Gap sandals broke 15 minutes into the day.

I couldn't walk around the office barefoot.  

Then I thought: "What would MacGuyver do?"

The break:

I think it snapped when I was crossing the street to get to work.

The idea:

The stretchy headband I wore to work.

The save:

I threw the shoes and headband away at the end of the day, but I think this was a brilliant, brilliant save.

just a tuesday

Today I had a lunch meeting with ArtsWave, the other interns, and a few administrators from a major performing arts organization in the city. Part of my internship program is visiting other organizations, meeting the administrators, and just getting familiar with the arts community. *hint, this week's meeting was at a very vocal organization* :)

My 68 pages of The Art of the Turnaround served me so well today! For the first time, the numbers made sense. The issues made sense. The strategies made sense. It was like I had a little babelfish in my ear and I understood arts management. (At least a little.) One of the speakers mentioned one of the most basic, but super important things that I've learned recently:

"The measure of success in a non-profit is how well it fulfills its mission".

After the meeting, the director of community relations took me on a quick tour of their offices. I was impressed by how stunningly beautiful everything was. The chairs, the desks, the windows, the elevator, the walls, the colors. Just beautiful. I could have stayed there all day. 

My normal office isn't nearly as visually striking as the office I visited for lunch, but I was happy to get back to my mismatched, cluttered little desk in the corner. This week, I got a new project. I'm doing some brainstorming for a series of short videos that introduce most of the organization's major events. I'm excited to see if any of my ideas will make it to the taping and through to the final product. Excitement.

Sorry, no picture for today.

The Art of the Turn Around

I took a quick trip home this weekend. Just to visit for a little bit. On the long road home, I started a new book that was suggested to me @ my last meeting with the other interns and our program sponsor.

The Art of the Turn Around: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Arts Organizations

This book is about Michael Kaiser, an arts administrator who saved a handful of major arts organizations from financial crisis. I was skeptical at first. I figured any book about management would be boring, way over my head, and read like a textbook. But what I like about The Art of the Turn Around is that it's very readable. Very practical. He talks about the finances, but he also talks about the relationships he formed at each organization. I loved the section on his experiences going on tour with the Alvin Ailey dancers.

 In the first chapter, he makes a list of ten rules for a successful turn around. #1 on the list:

"Someone must lead"

In the context of the chapter, he meant that someone has to lead the turn around with "a single unified vision for the organization" without bias. For me, it meant someone must lead. Someone has to be a leader to keep & create the opportunities for the artists and to serve the community. I'm excited to learn more about being a leader and I'm very excited about this book!

In other news, it is HOT outside. I'm staying in & might finally (finally) start studying for the GRE.

(serious face)

In case you missed it, my interny summer of adventure is currently at a standstill.

Almost a week ago, there was an incident. In broad daylight, on a busy street. I was not physically harmed, nothing was stolen, but enough was done to disrupt my sense of security. Today, I feel moderately safe, but I miss the day-to-day happenings of being out & about.  

In other news, I hear the boss liked my pictures from the Fourth of July.

Score.



5th of July

This weekend I worked the big Fourth of July event for the organization. Like the last big event, I was in charge of the photos. I was on my feet for most of the night trying to get a few good shots to bring back to the boss. Most were good. A few were great. IMHO.

After the event, I did the American thing to do on the Fourth of July: I ate a burger. A COW burger. Maybe McDonalds wasn't the best place to start the road back to omnivorism, but it was OK.

In other news, I made it to 1998 in the data entry project with aching wrists & forearms and a numbing right pinky. Not a good sign. I might have to slow down.

hello? is anyone there?




 

 Yesterday was a strange day in the office.

Co-workers were dropping like flies to leave for the long weekend. I didn't know I had a long weekend until close to lunchtime, so I was planning to stay all day.

By noon, my shared space in the office was empty.

For lunch, the break room was empty too.

I took a short walk & it looked like all the downtown professionals took an early vacation.  

Quiet day in the city.

 

 

 To celebrate the surprise long weekend, I had a big Italian dinner with a good friend.

Happy weekend everyone!